Google Slides: Whole Class Presentation

Google Slides is one of my favorite products to use with my class. If I share the presentation with the class they are all able to add a slide to the same presentation.

Jigsaw

For this jigsaw assignment I had students work in groups to create a short presentation on a topic. The students then split up their group and presented their presentation to other students.

Group Work Workflow

Create a Google Slides Template

I created a very basic presentation with a title slide for each topic.

Post in Google Classroom

The easiest way to distribute files to my class is to use Google Classroom (classroom.google.com). I created an assignment with “Students can edit file.” This allows all students to edit the same document.

Note: If you do not have a Google Apps domain (GAfE) you can click the blue share button and choose the advanced options. Change the sharing settings to anyone with the link can edit.

All Groups Build Slides

I’m fortunate to be in a 1:1 classroom environment. This allows all of the students in a group to actively participate in the group work. The students researched the topic and added slides to the Google Presentation. Remember all groups are adding slides to the same presentation. This has all 30 students adding slides to the same presentation at the same time.

Note: A few groups opted to create a separate presentation and then copy and paste their slides into the whole class presentation.

The students discussed what material to include in the presentation and how they wanted to present it.

Presentation

Rather than having each group present to the whole class, we wanted each student to present their topic. The students scatter from the group they are in to create a new group with one member from the other groups. Hopefully, this results in one person in each presentation that is an “expert” on one of the topics.

Starting the presentation starts with the first topic. The student whose group created those first slides presents to the small group. After the first topic slides are finished the presentation immediately goes to the next topic. The student responsible for those slides jumps in to present to the group. This repeats until all the students have presented to the small group.

Advantages

The advantages to this are that I have one document to assess. I can go through 30 pieces of student work quickly.

All students are actively contributing.

The students have to work together on their initial group slides since every student will be responsible for presenting the topic.

I can be active in providing feedback and comments while they work on it.

The presentation can be embedded as a single file into a website. (See above)

I save transition time since the presentations are ready to go. No thumb drives or account switching needed.

3 Comments

Hi Allison, I have a question. I used an idea I saw relating to this post. I want my students to use slides to create a collaborative Vocab Collab for each chapter we cover. Usually one or two chapters a week. I would divide up the words, between each of 5 color groups. I will set it to students can edit. But when it is done, do they hit return? Or can it stay out there all semester, and they add their words each week. There could be as many as 60 words by the time we finish. What would the best way for me to assess this, should they turn in each week and then I send it back? or what would be best to monitor participation and have these words be something they can study before the mid term or final assessment.
I welcome your thoughts, was hoping to try this week…!